


THE OTHER SINCLAIR

by MeJacinta



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, Inspired by Stranger Things (TV 2016), Minor Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Original Character(s), Possessive Billy Hargrove, Precious Eleven | Jane Hopper, Protective Steve Harrington
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 22:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16463468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeJacinta/pseuds/MeJacinta
Summary: When a teenage girl appears at the Sinclair's doorstep, things in Hawkins take a turn for the worse. Steve and the Party, with El's help, must work fast to identify and defeat their faceless enemy.Disclaimer: I own nothing Stranger Things. This work is for my own entertainment and features my favorite family: The Sinclairs.





	THE OTHER SINCLAIR

Chapter 1

The knock on the door sounded different. Lighter. Maybe sly. But not salesman sly or Girl Scout sly. Not even stranger sly.

Mr. Sinclair glanced up from the latest Family RV ads and stroked his thick moustache pensively. He was a man of precision, his wife had often told him. And of a sharp, near feminine intuition that made lying to him an almost impossible fete. Almost.

“Should I get the door, dad?” Lucas piped up. He was helping Dustin Henderson attach a winding plastic tube to an odd scrap cuboid on the dining table. Apparently, science fares happened weekly at Hawkins Middle School these days. Even though he was not buying the lie, Sinclair knew for sure that only Lucas and his wide eyed gang of friends could be so adorably strange and get away with it.

“Nah,” Mr. Sinclair said, putting his newspaper aside. “I’ll get it, son.”

When he finally opened the door, an unfamiliar teenage girl was standing on the threshold. Her chest was heaving, but not once did her eyes leave his.

Sinclair blinked. “May I help you, young lady?”

“Mr. Sinclair…?” The girl began, then trailed off with a swallow. She must have been from a run. 

“That’s me.”

When the girl’s track jacket rustled, Sinclair’s eyes were drawn to a neat, brown envelope in her hand. She pushed it into his open hand, withdrawing sharply from their brief contact as though singed by a flame. 

“What is this…?” 

Gingerly, Sinclair opened the envelope, pulled out a paper which he first noticed was stamped by the state of Georgia.

“My name is Lisa Rockwell,” the girl announced. She spoke firmly, but with a discreet tenseness that made Sinclair more concerned than he had anticipated. Something in her raspy voice suggested that the little she had said was supposed to mean something. But what?

“Well, Lisa,” Sinclair said as calmly as he could, “it could help if you were a bit clearer about what you’re trying to say.”

An expression flickered across her face. Embarrassment? Or was it resentment? When she could not talk at all, Mr. Sinclair decided he might as well just make things easier for the complicated teenager. But he had barely had a closer look at the paper in his hand before Lisa suddenly burst out.

“I’m your daughter, sir. My mother Janette… she said I’d find you here.”

 

……….

 

The words hit like an avalanche, sudden and suffocating. For a few seconds, Sinclair just stood there, stuck in the doorway, strangely mesmerized by the pink and silver blurs of the girl’s tracksuit.

Then without saying a word, he wheeled around, envelope in hand, bound for the kitchen. 

Precision. Intuition. 

He almost walked into Dustin, who could have sneaked up behind him, listened all that while. But damn did he even care?!

He found the money jar in the kitchen cabinet. With the girls out at Grandma’s, though, the supply was more depleted than he had expected.

“Dad, who is that?” Lucas was asking, suddenly at his side.

“Not now, Lucas!” Sinclair snapped. He stuffed a fat roll of dollar bills into the envelope that bore Lisa Rockwell Sinclair’s birth certificate. Most probably it was fake. Better yet, he thought, a practical joke.

“Then at least explain why you’re taking you and mom’s savings,” Lucas could not stop insisting. “Dad!” He called out, visibly agitated now as Sinclair half ran across the hall.

The girl Lisa was still standing in the doorway. Dustin, who had been in an apparent conversation with her, cleared away from Sinclair’s tall, stomping frame  
.  
“Mr. Sinclair…” Lisa began to say when he had reached her.

But he lifted up a firm finger to interrupt her. And when he spoke, it was hard to believe just how high and dry his voice could become. “Look here. I got a wife. I got children too. I love ‘em with all my heart…even more than my own life. But this…” He swept the air with his envelope bearing hand, and made sure to return the envelope into the girl’s hand. “This is an obvious misunderstanding. Okay? Just take this, ma’am. I hope that helps.”

“Sir, I__”

BANG!

The slam of the door was unexpectedly loud, Sinclair could admit. He should get a grip of himself. But heck, with Janette nothing had ever been precise. And now, just like the few imprecisions in his life, her girl was out of his life too. Sinclair could not help a loud sigh of relief even though Lucas and Dustin were now standing together in the middle of the hall, staring at him like some horror movie.

“She seemed nice,” Dustin said eventually. 

Sinclair, more shocked than angry at the remark, suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Even though he had come to appreciate the boy Dustin’s ability to throw in the quirkiest comments in otherwise traumatic situations, this was just the worst time to joke about anything.

“Have your breakfast, boys,” Sinclair ordered, ignoring the strain in his own voice. “Or you’ll be late for school.”

“Like, will she be back or something?” Dustin continued. But Lucas showed little interest in stopping his friend’s yapping. Perhaps he was just as curious at this point as Dustin ‘Sherlock Holmes’ was, Sinclair thought.

“I honestly don’t know,” Sinclair said. “But should she come to any one of you today, I want you to report to me. Okay?”

Lucas and Dustin exchanged perplexed glances but said nothing. 

Sinclair stood his ground nonetheless, this time focused on his son’s friend. “You said the girl seemed nice, Dustin. But people are not always what they seem. I’m sure you and your friends know that too well.”

And true it was. Ever since the girl El appeared in Hawkins, stranger things kept rearing up in what had otherwise been a quiet, peaceful town: abductions, murders, alien occurrences… Lisa Rockwell was no exception.

“Certainly, Lucas’ dad,” Dustin was quick to say. Sure, he only meant to throw Sinclair off, but at least he had words to think on now. Things that could ultimately protect Lucas and his friends from just about anything. Dustin could be childish, Sinclair thought, but he certainly was not stupid.

“Can we skip breakfast, dad?” Lucas was already stuffing the mysterious cuboid in a duffel bag unperturbed by the plastic tube that kept dangling out. “We promised Mike we’d show him this thingy before class.”

“Godspeed, son. Just don’ tell your mom I let you off easy…” Sinclair paused, suddenly confronted by the reality of his wife learning about Lisa Rockwell’s visit. That somehow, he would have to drag his innocent boy into lying to his mom today. Or that Lucas would be burdened so early with the weight of betraying one parent for the other. So once more Sinclair was rooted to the spot, as the room exploded into watery blobs of yellow, blues and browns before his eyes. 

Then Lucas suddenly gasped in the doorway, snapping Sinclair out of his trance.

“It’s just an envelope,” Dustin was saying.

Panic, hot and bitter, rose up Sinclair’s throat. “Don’t open that,” he croaked.

“And a note…?” Dustin had not heard a word. He read the note aloud with his heavy-tongued drawl. “Don’t…need…your…money.”

 

…………………………..

The car wobbled and jumped off road, digging into a generous amount of crunchy, autumn leaves by the road side. As it screeched to a stop, Chief Jim Hopper looked up from behind the wheel. A curse flew from his lips at the flurry of activity before him.  
“Holy shit!”   
Officer Powell, looking more nervous than usual at the prospect of a real case, rushed to meet Jim as he emerged from his patrol car. And when the cowards got nervous, Jim thought, it meant hell for everyone else.  
“The freaking FBI is meddling in Hawkins now!” Jim jutted a prominent chin at the navy blue clad men hovering over a smoldering crime scene; toys all up and running like it was a gadget competition. In truth, Hawkins had never experienced a threat worth breaking the bank for.  
Powell squared his shoulders, his discomfort very apparent. “That’s beside the point, Chief,” he retorted. “Have you seen the freak show back there?” He barely glanced at the hissing, twisting smoke from the wreckage behind him, deciding it more appropriate that the Chief see things for himself. “What took you so long, anyway?”  
Jim put on a straight face. He had spent much of the morning with his daughter Jane stuffing his face with waffles, presuming that Powell was panicking over nothing. At the time, he had not thought the case was as ghastly. Hard to believe so anyway when Jane was at the happiest she had ever been in several months.   
“Blockade signs,” Jim replied, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We’re looking at a three road traffic gridlock this early in the morning.” The blue clad men were enough to need their own wing at the Hawkins Police Department. Jim felt the first waves of impatience churn within him. “Who’s in charge?” He asked Powell.  
“Gentlemen!” A crisp voice suddenly erupted from behind the two men. They wheeled around simultaneously to be met with the owner of the voice, a tall man with his pale nose held up high and his hands adamantly to his waist. “You must be Jim Hopper,” the man said, looking rather amused.  
“Chief Jim Hopper,” Jim corrected.  
“Agent Clark Russo.” The man showed his badge and then zipped up his FBI jacket, shuddering slightly against the morning chill. “Tell me Chief… has this always been a strange town? I mean last I heard Hawkins has nothing on Roswell.”  
Jim could have punched the asshole. “I thought I should be the one asking questions here, since it seems you have all the information.”  
“Then you will find that we still value civilian input, Jim,” Clark said. “Even though we already know what we’re doing.” A grin came to his face, but it was wax white and somehow chilling. With his hair gelled so close to his scalp and his arms crossed, Jim thought, Agent Clarke Russo could Cosplay Count Dracula any day.   
“What strange things were you referring to?” Jim wanted to know.

“Dozens of pumpkin farms blighted overnight, to say the least.” Clark was smirking now. “Yes Jim. We’ve done our research pretty well.”   
“Three men burned to a crisp in an unscathed vehicle? I’d say that’s more like new here than strange. But, surely, this isn’t your first rodeo, Agent Russo?”   
Clark’s face dropped as Jim relished the bubbling triumph of watching the FBI defeated. Clark reorganized his features and stood taller than was necessary. But it certainly did not have the Hawkins officers fooled.  
“We’ve been tracking similar occurrences in three different states. Though there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the incidents and the victims other than that.”  
Jim averted his eyes from the sight of the charred bodies Clark referred to, blackened beyond recognition but with an eerie life like ring to them regardless. Abruptly, he was being flooded by memories of Jane’s evil captors, all their strange menagerie of human experimentation…and the lives lost in the turmoil. For a moment, he could have empathized with the FBI bastard.  
“Looks like you have yourself a dead end, agent,” Powell came up, having finally found his comical edge. And just as Jim was allowing his mind to be eased by comical relief, the roar of an engine sliced through the cool, still air.  
All three men turned round to behold a car fast approaching them, stirring up a whirlwind of leaves in its wake. Few of the FBI agents looked bewildered by the sudden interruption, momentarily stepping away from their gadgets.  
“Shit,” Jim hissed, hurrying down the road to wave the car to a stop.  
“I’m counting on the good people of Hawkins to offer insight into this case,” Clark told Powell. “Starting right now.”  
The car screeched to a stop and a teenage boy with a mess of dirty blond hair peered out at them from the side window.  
“Hargrove…” Jim started to growl. Had he not seen the red headed girl about Jane’s age in the backseat, he could have shouted all the expletives bubbling up in his mind.  
Billy Hargrove grunted, the cigarette between his lips flaring red as he did so. “Yeah, I saw the blockades,” he said. “But, you see…Chief…. I am running a little late here.”  
“I warned you, Billy,” the red headed girl piped up.  
“Zip it, Max!” Billy turned to look at Jim, an uncharacteristic grin plastered on his face. “Look, she got a science presentation to do in five minutes,” he explained as Max rolled her eyes. “And that’s kind of more important to me than playing cop and thief.”  
Jim snatched the cigarette from Billy, more than happy to turn his badge into a nice, little ash tray. “Kiss my ass! Which part of the word crime scene don’t you understand?”  
The Hargrove boy had barely flinched at his cigarette being put out. “C’mon, Chief. Arson barely counts as one,” he cackled, somewhat in Clark Russo’s fashion.   
That made Jim even more incensed. Today seemed to be a field day for all jackasses.   
“Oh, yeah. Because you’d know everything about that, right?”  
Before the Hargrove boy could return a blow of words, his little sister gasped. “What happened to them?” She was referring to the charred bodies, looking sick to her stomach.  
Billy followed Max’s line of sight, and was suddenly confronted with the gruesome scene beyond the ring of FBI clad men. Real fucking FBI agents… in Hawkins. The car could have been hit by some baby meteor only that all the action had happened inside the car and not outside it. Strange…  
When the Chief’s voice rang up, Billy almost jumped from his seat. “C’ mon Hargrove. It is bad enough you brought a kid with you. Don’t make me arrest you.”  
Billy’s hand flew to the clutch of his Sedan, the need to get away from there overtaking his desire to poke more fun at the Chief. He pretended to roll his eyes as the engine coughed its way into a rumble. “Yeah, whatever.”  
As the car pulled away, Jim felt the first waves of fear grip him. You could tell things were serious when Neil Hargrove’s son got spooked by something. Bad serious meant danger for Jane.  
“Teenage tantrums,” Clark commented from behind Jim’s shoulder. Jim had almost forgotten he existed.  
“You have no idea.” Jim looked at the charred bodies with renewed curiosity. He turned to Clark deciding it could not hurt as much. “Can I have a look?”

…………………………

**Author's Note:**

> Because we are never really told what Mr. Sinclair's first name is in Stranger Things, i will be assigning him and his wife names of my own. For now i just stick with Sinclair Sr.  
> Poor Lisa. Not to worry, though. She will be in good hands soon. Anf Mr. Sinclair might just have a change of heart.


End file.
